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Later Inventions

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The spirit of Thomas Edison can best be described as restless. In 1882, when he turned 35, he shut down his Menlo Park laboratory. For five years, he worked out of temporary locations.

In 1887, he moved his base of operations to West Orange, New Jersey, where he would live for the rest of his life. He built a huge laboratory and staffed it with the best minds he could find. Edison would dive completely into a project. Sometimes he would work on it for ten years. He would have to be completely sure that a project wouldn’t work before he would give up. Because he was never quite satisfied, he might change something when it was already on the assembly line. His workers wouldn’t be happy about that.